J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

The vast size, striking shape and prominent location of the Castel Sant’Angelo, located on the banks of the Tiber near St Peter’s and the Vatican, make the castle one of the most prominent landmarks in Rome. Originally the mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian, the cylindrical building dates from AD 139 but was later converted from a tomb to a fortress, acting as part of the military defenses of the city until the end of the nineteenth century. The name derives from a legendary vision of the Archangel Michael who reportedly appeared above the building sheathing his sword as a symbol of the end of a great plague in 590 AD. Since 1753, a massive bronze statue of the angel by the Flemish sculptor Peter Anton Verschaeffelt (1710–93) has crowned the top, replacing an earlier one in marble by Raffaelo da Montelupo (circa 1504/5–circa 1566/7). The castle is linked across the Tiber to the centre of the city by the Ponte Sant’Angelo, a bridge built by Hadrian and formerly known as the Pons Aelius.

This sketch depicts the Castel Sant’Angelo from the west, from a point near present-day Piazza Pia and the Passetto di Borgo (the elevated corridor which links the castle with the Vatican). The page is in close proximity to the series of studies which evolved into his vast finished oil painting, Rome from the Vatican. Raffaelle Accompanied by La Fornarina, Preparing his Pictures for the Decoration of the Loggia exhibited 1820 (Tate, N00503),1 (see folio 26, D14792), and is therefore perhaps also related to the development of the picture. The angle of Turner’s viewpoint of the Castel Sant’Angelo, for example, is almost identical to that seen in the view from the Vatican loggia, albeit at a much closer distance. Furthermore, Turner appears to have referenced the line of figures, one of whom is carrying a cross, visible across the foreground of this sketch. In the painting, he has depicted a similar religious procession entering St Peter’s Square, near the centre of the composition from the direction of Castel Sant’Angelo.

Further views of the Castel Sant’Angelo can be found on folios 23–3 (D14967–D14968), as well as in the St Peter’s sketchbook (Tate D16215 and D16216; Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 33a and 34); the Rome: C. Studies sketchbook (Tate D16336 and D16358; Turner Bequest CLXXXIX 10 and 32); and the Small Roman C. Studies sketchbook (Tate D16405; Turner Bequest CXC 9). The fortress also forms the subject for two vignette watercolour illustrations related to literary projects: Rome, Castle of St. Angelo for Rogers’s Italy circa 1826–7 (see Tate D27677; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 160); and The Castle of St. Angelo for Byron’s Life and Works, circa 1832 (Tate, N05243).